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Are You Really Pro-Life?

It is time to simply blow off steam and rant political. I just flipped channels and watched Jane Fonda tackle some Britney Spears lookalike in the film “Monster in Law”. Why did she tackle her? Because that dimwit could not comprehend the significance of Roe v. Wade (she thought it was a boxing match).

What reason do you have to vote Republican in 2012? Give me a single legitimate reason and I’ll hear you out. If you aren’t a millionaire you have more to lose than to gain by voting for the “let the rich guys off while sticking it to the other 98 percent of the country” party. If you’re a woman, well, you have an extraordinary amount to lose.

So, you’re voting Republican because of abortion?

I suspect many Americans are voting for the Republican Party ticket because of abortion. Maybe you are swayed by some other “single issue” (most of us are single-issue voters), but let’s just roll with abortion. You are a morally righteous anti-abortion crusader and President Obama believes that every woman has the right to make her own choice. Vice-president Biden, who is personally anti-abortion, also believes that he has no right to force any other person to adopt his personal religious philosophy. Clearly these are men who lack moral character.

What would President Romney do? Well candidate Romney seems to have taken every possible stance on abortion so it’s hard to pin down which Etch-a-Sketch Romney would show up in the White House. At least we know where congressman Ryan stands. Paul Ryan thinks that rape is a “method of conception” and believes that his church’s position on abortion should be instituted nationwide by the government – as Thomas Jefferson would have wanted, obviously.

Let’s just assume that a Romney/Ryan presidency would sign all of those anti-abortion laws and maybe even pack the Supreme Court with anti-abortion justices. That is what the anti-abortion voter is hoping for, so let’s just give it to them.

This man’s vote counts the same as mine?

Remember how Republicans screamed until their lungs bled about Obamacare getting between you and your doctor? Well, umm, banning abortion puts the government right up inside your naughty bits… hard to imagine any more “getting between you and your doctor” than that, right?

But perhaps it is worth it. As we all know, if we can just ban abortion that will stop all abortions. Before the United States Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade no woman had ever had an abortion. After Roe v. Wade women started getting clipped at the local super market (as Michelle Bachmann once claimed, it’s just so darn convenient). It essentially incentivizes getting an abortion, right?

Abortion was actually legal in the United States until the 1880s when the Great Awakening left this country with a disturbing religious fervor that it has yet to shake. From the late 19th century until 1973 abortion was increasingly restricted, transforming what was a safe and regulated medical practice into a back alley abomination.

Making something illegal does not make it stop happening. It is illegal to drive above the speed limit, to do drugs, to murder people, to rob banks, etc… and yet, crimes are still committed.

Abortion is no different. In the United States today the demand for abortion is actually very low. Hormonal contraception – the birth control pill – was not widely used until the 1970s. In the evangelical era of the early 1900s it wasn’t even easy to find reliable condoms. In some places using a condom was illegal.

As you can rightly imagine, in a world without reliable or available contraceptives, some women will feel the need to abort unwanted pregnancies. Unfortunately, in a world without reliable contraceptives OR legal abortion clinics, women have to rely on the black market.

It’s time to party like it’s 1971!

In 2012 a woman, after arriving at the difficult decision to abort, can go to a licensed doctor and receive 21st century medical care. In 1972 a woman, after arriving at the difficult decision to abort, was forced to ingest poison, suffer massive abdominal trauma or insert devices into her body. If she did find a black market clinic, she had to put her faith (and her life) in the hands of someone completely outside the world of medical regulation or practice standards.

A job gone wrong could leave the woman sterile, injured, or dead. Hundreds of thousands of abortions were performed each year in the 1960s. Tens of thousands of women ended up in emergency rooms. No lives were saved by banning abortion, but forcing women to rely on unsafe methods did lead to thousands of deaths – the unborn fetus (or if you prefer for your own terminological clarity ‘baby’) of course died regardless.

Women died in alleys, bathrooms, and blacked out minivans with wire coat hangers between their legs. They died of internal bleeding and poisoning. They were left sterile, broken, and shunned by society. For what? So the Christian temperance movement could feel like it had done god’s holy work?

If you have a problem with abortions don’t get one. Offer help to women in need. If you want to stop abortion support the widespread use of contraceptives (sorry, Catholicism). The most proven way to lower pregnancy rates, and in turn lower the number of unwanted pregnancies, is to invest in education and family planning. Work to give women legitimate options beyond simply being vessels for reproduction.

You’re against abortion? Don’t get one, problem solved

Making abortion illegal is the first step to take if you want to live in a society riddled with the bodies of dead young women. Making abortion illegal is the step you take when you want to live in a country where women are forced to raise children of rape and incest. Making abortion illegal turns a safe and clean (but still psychologically traumatic) medical procedure and into something that is done in the back of a pickup truck in an alley.

Mitt Romney stuffing the Supreme Court with anti-abortion crusaders will lead to thousands of dead women AND dead “babies”.

You can’t be pro-life and then vote for a chickenhawk warrior who wants to send women back to the pre-modern era.

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One thought on “Are You Really Pro-Life?”

Can we also just comment on the irony of the pro-life “crusaders” who extend that moniker to wars carried out in Afghanistan, Iraq, and holy shit if Romney gets elected Iran. So many support these wars because we are “fighting terror” or “doing God’s work” (a disturbing commonality with those we are supposedly chasing down), but in truth we are trying to make sure private interests are secured. Historians claim that the last religious war was the Thirty Years War, which was concluded in 1648, but in truth the Wars fought in the Middle East since Gulf War #1 are religious wars because they are persecuted by the politicians who are elected by the massive Christian voting block who thinks we are fighting radical Islam – how many lives are lost then (and not just American lives).